DISCLAIMER: Deadwood belongs to David Milch and HBO and a bunch of extremely talented writers, producers and actors. I'm just an 'umble fan.
CHALLENGE: Written as part of the 1001 Nights Challenge - addiction.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
SPOILERS: Set mid season 2

For as long as she had been a woman Alma had suffered from this. It wasn't nerves exactly, or hysteria as one less than sympathetic doctor had put it. Sometimes life was just too harsh, too bright and brittle, too grating and grinding. And then one day she found her medicine. And the world became soft and pure and simple.

She had grown to need it every day, to crave it when she couldn't have it. Marriage hadn't solved anything. She merely swapped her father's lies and machinations for her husband's. The days were still too bright, the nights too long and too dark.

Her first day in Deadwood she thought she would die. The noise, the stench, the roughness, all the hot little eyes watching her. Her husband was playing a dangerous game with dangerous men. The brutality she was casual witness to horrified her. She took a double dose of her medicine that day and again the next day, content to let everything drift away.

Bram was concerned enough to call the doctor to her and that wily man knew the moment he laid eyes on her what her true affliction was. He begged her to taper off her use but promised to keep her supplied.

Then fate took her husband from her and brought Sofia into her life. And Sophia brought Trixie.

The kind of wife she was, the kind of woman she had been brought up to be she was one step away from being a whore like Trixie though she was too refined to let even the thought cross her mind. The social divide between them made such distinctions possible. But somehow despite all of that they were kindred spirits. She had her medicine and Trixie her smokes to keep the world and its mendacity at bay.

And as the days wore on, they discovered they had each other.

Miss Isringhausen had taken Sophia on a visit to play with some of the other children under the watchful eyes of Mr Utter and Jane. Most of the other denizens of Mr Farnum's boarding house were out about their own business.

They lay together in the heat of the afternoon, skin to skin, no secrets between them but curtains drawn against the too fierce sun and those hot little eyes that seemed to watch their every move. Trixie took a deep drag of her cigarette, eyes heavy lidded against the soporific smoke and then handed it to Alma, curled into the curve of her arm, who took a more tentative drag. Though she was getting more used to her 'medicine' in this form she would never be entirely convinced that smoking was a ladylike pursuit. And in truth, as long as she had Trixie, she did not need anything else.

She remembered something. "Mr Swearengen " and paused as a finger was laid on her lips.

"I'm sorry," Alma whispered, stroking her fingers through Trixie's golden hair. No one would ever mistake Sophia for her birth daughter, their colouring was too different but she could pass for Trixie's, and Alma knew that Trixie had a real affection for the young foundling. What a family the three of them would make. The success of her gold claim had made her rich enough to do pretty much as she wanted, buy what  and whom  she wanted. Perhaps even placate the hot-eyed devils who wanted to claim or control her  Swearengen and Bullock, her father and her father in law.

"No one else exists when we're in here," Trixie repeated softly, discarding the butt of her cigarette before turning and beginning to kiss her way down the lean lines of her lover's body, one hand tangling in Alma's hair, scattering the pins that held it up, deftly untangling the braids and coils so that it fell loose around her face and shoulders. She feasted on Alma's small breasts, licking and suckling at the dark nipples, glorying in the soft sounds of Alma's growing arousal. She loved to take her time to allow Alma to let down her guard, lower her natural reserve and fully participate to take her own steps on the journey Trixie enticed her on. It had taken a long time for Alma to gain the confidence to make her own explorations, not only of Trixie's body but of her own. She had never before touched herself 'like that' and had rarely seen her own naked form before Trixie showed her just how beautiful and precious she was. Now she was shameless, the little reproving voice (that sounded so much like Bram's mother) said in her head, writhing naked under the touch of a woman who was no more than a common whore. But the voice was quiet and getting weaker by the day. Alma's primary thoughts now for Trixie were love for the other woman and gratitude that she had helped save herself from herself.

It was a rare thing to find love, rarer still for it to be reciprocated. Both women knew it could not last forever and that the memory of these precious stolen afternoons was to be stored for the darker days ahead. Whatever else fate brought upon them, no one could take this moment away.

Trixie compared her tanned hand to Alma's breast, white and silky soft to the touch. She always thought that Alma was somehow made of finer stuff than ordinary folk. She rested the pad of her thumb on Alma's nipple, feeling it pebble and change beneath her firm touch. Alma shifted so that she was somewhat straddling Trixie's slim hard thigh. As Alma began to press herself against her, rubbing herself Trixie took a deep breath, breathing in the wonderful scent of Alma when she was in heat, thick and hot and spiced. Fuck, if she could bottle it and sell it she'd make a fortune but she'd settle for being the only one to smell it, to know. This was true addiction.

They kept it quiet in case that cocksucking bastard E B Farnum heard them. It was not that he might report what he heard to Swearengen it was that he would think about them picture them together behind his hot little eyes. And neither woman could bear the thought of that. This was their's and their's alone.